It is a problem that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago.
Until the 1960s boys spent longer and went further in school than girls,
and were more likely to graduate from university. Now, across the rich
world and in a growing number of poor countries, the balance has tilted
the other way. Policymakers who once fretted about girls’ lack of
confidence in science now spend their time dangling copies of “Harry
Potter” before surly boys. Sweden has commissioned research into its
“boy crisis”. Australia has devised a reading programme called “Boys,
Blokes, Books & Bytes”. In just a couple of generations, one gender
gap has closed, only for another to open up.
The reversal is laid out in a report published on March 5th by the
OECD, a Paris-based rich-country think-tank. Boys’ dominance just about
endures in maths: at age 15 they are, on average, the equivalent of
three months’ schooling ahead of girls. In science the results are
fairly even. But in reading, where girls have been ahead for some time, a
gulf has appeared. In all 64 countries and economies in the study,
girls outperform boys. The average gap is equivalent to an extra year of
schooling.
xx > xy?
The OECD deems literacy to be the most important skill that it
assesses, since further learning depends on it. Sure enough, teenage
boys are 50% more likely than girls to fail to achieve basic proficiency
in any of maths, reading and science (see chart 1). Youngsters in this
group, with nothing to build on or shine at, are prone to drop out of
school altogether.
To see why boys and girls fare so differently in the classroom, first
look at what they do outside it. The average 15-year-old girl devotes
five-and-a-half hours a week to homework, an hour more than the average
boy, who spends more time playing video games and trawling the internet.
Three-quarters of girls read for pleasure, compared with little more
than half of boys. Reading rates are falling everywhere as screens draw
eyes from pages, but boys are giving up faster. The OECD found that,
among boys who do as much homework as the average girl, the gender gap
in reading fell by nearly a quarter.
Once in the classroom, boys long to be out of it. They are twice as
likely as girls to report that school is a “waste of time”, and more
often turn up late. Just as teachers used to struggle to persuade girls
that science is not only for men, the OECD now urges parents and
policymakers to steer boys away from a version of masculinity that
ignores academic achievement. “There are different pressures on boys,”
says Mr Yip. “Unfortunately there’s a tendency where they try to live up
to certain expectations in terms of [bad] behaviour.”
Boys’ disdain for school might have been less irrational when there
were plenty of jobs for uneducated men. But those days have long gone.
It may be that a bit of swagger helps in maths, where confidence plays a
part in boys’ lead (though it sometimes extends to delusion: 12% of
boys told the OECD that they were familiar with the mathematical concept
of “subjunctive scaling”, a red herring that fooled only 7% of girls).
But their lack of self-discipline drives teachers crazy.
Perhaps because they can be so insufferable, teenage boys are often
marked down. The OECD found that boys did much better in its anonymised
tests than in teacher assessments. The gap with girls in reading was a
third smaller, and the gap in maths—where boys were already ahead—opened
up further. In another finding that suggests a lack of even-handedness
among teachers, boys are more likely than girls to be forced to repeat a
year, even when they are of equal ability.
What is behind this discrimination? One possibility is that teachers
mark up students who are polite, eager and stay out of fights, all
attributes that are more common among girls. In some countries, academic
points can even be docked for bad behaviour. Another is that women, who
make up eight out of ten primary-school teachers and nearly seven in
ten lower-secondary teachers, favour their own sex, just as male bosses
have been shown to favour male underlings. In a few places sexism is
enshrined in law: Singapore still canes boys, while sparing girls the
rod.
Some countries provide an environment in which boys can do better. In
Latin America the gender gap in reading is relatively small, with boys
in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru trailing girls less than they do
elsewhere. Awkwardly, however, this nearly always comes with a wider
gender gap in maths, in favour of boys. The reverse is true, too:
Iceland, Norway and Sweden, which have got girls up to parity with boys
in maths, struggle with uncomfortably wide gender gaps in reading. Since
2003, the last occasion when the OECD did a big study, boys in a few
countries have caught up in reading and girls in several others have
significantly narrowed the gap in maths. No country has managed both.
Onwards and upwards
Girls’ educational dominance persists after school. Until a few
decades ago men were in a clear majority at university almost everywhere
(see chart 2), particularly in advanced courses and in science and
engineering. But as higher education has boomed worldwide, women’s
enrolment has increased almost twice as fast as men’s. In the OECD women
now make up 56% of students enrolled, up from 46% in 1985. By 2025 that
may rise to 58%.
Even in the handful of OECD countries where women are in the minority
on campus, their numbers are creeping up. Meanwhile several, including
America, Britain and parts of Scandinavia, have 50% more women than men
on campus. Numbers in many of America’s elite private colleges are more
evenly balanced. It is widely believed that their opaque admissions
criteria are relaxed for men.
The feminisation of higher education was so gradual that for a long
time it passed unremarked. According to Stephan Vincent-Lancrin of the
OECD, when in 2008 it published a report pointing out just how far it
had gone, people “couldn’t believe it”.
Women who go to university are more likely than their male peers to
graduate, and typically get better grades. But men and women tend to
study different subjects, with many women choosing courses in education,
health, arts and the humanities, whereas men take up computing,
engineering and the exact sciences. In mathematics women are drawing
level; in the life sciences, social sciences, business and law they have
moved ahead.
Social change has done more to encourage women to enter higher
education than any deliberate policy. The Pill and a decline in the
average number of children, together with later marriage and
childbearing, have made it easier for married women to join the
workforce. As more women went out to work, discrimination became less
sharp. Girls saw the point of study once they were expected to have
careers. Rising divorce rates underlined the importance of being able to
provide for yourself. These days girls nearly everywhere seem more
ambitious than boys, both academically and in their careers. It is hard
to believe that in 1900-50 about half of jobs in America were barred to
married women.
So are women now on their way to becoming the dominant sex? Hanna
Rosin’s book, “The End of Men and the Rise of Women”, published in 2012,
argues that in America, at least, women are ahead not only
educationally but increasingly also professionally and socially.
Policymakers in many countries worry about the prospect of a growing
underclass of ill-educated men. That should worry women, too: in the
past they have typically married men in their own social group or above.
If there are too few of those, many women will have to marry down or
not at all.
Continua aqui
O Ministério da Educação (MEC) e o Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais (Inep) divulgaram, no dia 9 de setembro de 2014, os dados do Censo da Educação Superior 2013. O curso de Ciências Contábeis está entre os mais procurados pelos estudantes de graduação e ocupa a quarta colocação no ranking, com 328.031 futuros profissionais.
Do total de 200 dias letivos do ano escolar aos quais os alunos brasileiros têm direito, 20 dias são desperdiçados por conta de atrasos dos professores, saídas dos docentes antes do término da aula e com outras atividades que nada tem a ver com o ensino e a aprendizagem. Nesse cálculo sequer foi considerado o tempo perdido com a contenção da bagunça e com a realização de outras atividades pelo professor, como a realização de chamada e a entrega de trabalhos escolares.
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